


Surprise Visit

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alcohol Withdrawal, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Sort of? - Freeform, this takes place somewhere towards the early middle of the first series? as vague as that is ahahaha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 03:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14559729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Dionysus wasn't expecting to see his wife, Ariadne, for a while...  Given Zeus's rules for his punishment at Camp Half-Blood, and all that.  Ariadne turns up, anyway!





	Surprise Visit

**Author's Note:**

> Hi~~ I really hope you enjoy this, if you read it. Surely I'm not the only one who gets a new Percy Jackson-universe e-book and immediately does a search through for Dionysus's name... Right??? 
> 
> Ahhh, I always wanna see more of these two. I'm sorry for anything I got wrong, and I hope you have a great day!! As I say in the tags, I imagined this taking place somewhere near the early-middle of the first series.

Everything smelled like bug spray around Camp Half-Blood just then – bug spray and clinging bonfire smoke…  Bug spray and sticky fake-sugar Diet Coke Dionysus may or may not have spilled down the front of his shirt and decided – eh.  Didn’t matter.  Wasn’t like his pounding godly hangover would fade if he poured some of his will out like divine bleach and scrubbed the stain clean, or anything.  Wasn’t like he needed the demigod campers to think, _“Dang, Mr. D’s shirt looks especially free of Diet Coke today!”_

Honestly, it might’ve been the loneliness talking, or his frustration, or – again! – the swimmy alcohol-less hurt that wasn’t likely to let Dionysus’s skull loose until his punishment on earth was over, but he didn’t particularly care what his campers made of him most days.  He wanted the kids safe by those weird demigods-gone-questing standards, yeah, and he’d make sure they were fed, but Dionysus knew who he was.  The god of wine and revelry – of roaring frenzy and contradictions and cleansing release, of bacchanalia that could leave a whole universe dizzy.  A god like  _that_  had never really been defined by “capture the flag” stats, or how good he was at showing up to dumb demigod-camp maintenance meetings way too early in the morning.  It’d defy the point, really. 

Of course, camp-ish stuff might’ve meant a little more to Dionysus if he’d actually chosen to be there.  Maybe as a favor, you know.  He  _committed_  to his favors, like when he’d granted Midas the golden touch as a thank you and then washed it away without any hurt feelings or holy smiting after the king didn’t want it anymore.  Or maybe Dionysus would’ve been more bothered by the whole thing a while back, when he’d been born a demigod himself.  When he’d been hunted by Hera for so long it was hard to imagine a time when she  _wouldn’t_  want to ruin his life; when he’d tended to his gardens and dated a satyr named Ampelos – learned what loss tasted like and gotten used to the idea that he’d grow old one day...  Mm.

 A lot of things had bothered Dionysus more, back then, before his frenzied parties shook Olympus and left even the most stuck-up sorts dancing or crumpled giggling in the hallways, velvety wine on their lips and pounding music in their heads.   _Humanity_  felt like so many long, blurry lifetimes ago, sometimes, and there was no need for bug spray in the plane of the gods.  Plenty of Olympians had never even gotten a single mosquito bite, or gone through the day with a hangover, or learned what it was like to get gasped at by a bunch of teenagers for arriving to an obstacle course challenge midway through and stepping confusedly through some of the obstacles. 

Ah, Camp Half-Blood. It had been so long since Dionysus had spun the world into unknowing and wild, surrendering ecstasy.   Vines coiling everywhere, berries ground beneath dancing feet so the whole world might’ve been a living, bleeding thing; cackling Maenads with honey-sticky fingers and snakes glistening around their necks instead of jewelry.  The whole deal.  It had been so long since Dionysus’d had anything to drink beyond earthly sodas and the camp’s infamous “bug juice”...  And so long since he’d seen his wife, Ariadne, too.   _She_  was back on Olympus, Zeus’s orders.  Back on Olympus with all Dionysus’s best wines waiting bottled-up in the dark, and most of his slinking, bloody-smiled leopards.  (Not Seymour, of course, body-less and purring from his stand on the Big House wall.  But still.  Seymour was new.)

Ariadne sent pictures of herself posing with those leopards, sometimes, all of them curled on the couch watching Olympian sitcoms or out to brunch with Aphrodite.  And she wrote Dionysus actual letters, now and then, too, whatever nymph he’d been chasing to get himself cast down like this...  She doodled pictures for him, and referenced inside jokes from a couple centuries back that she knew would still make him chuckle.  Albeit quietly – a sputtering choke of Diet Coke, maybe – so none of the campers could hear him and get funny ideas. 

The letters even smelled like home, sometimes, if Hermes was quick getting them down to the camp: like wine and soil, like the flowery shampoo Ariadne liked to buy. Dionysus carried them around in his pockets, sometimes, until the ink started getting smeary in the heat.  And he wrote letters back, too, of course, with theatrical scenes scribbled out in his near-indecipherable handwriting, with snarky updates and hello-s from his demigod sons, Castor and Pollux.  With his love.  With as much love as he’d ever known how to give.                

Mr. D knew a whole batch of demigods would grow up thinking of him as Camp Half-Blood’s counselor, now, but he’d never really seen himself that way.  His heart was drunk off somewhere on Olympus, and Ariadne was catching him up on everything he’d missed, maybe running tender, rain-smooth fingers through his hair.  No sweat slicking his floppy sunhats to his curls or making his shirts cling uncomfortably to his stomach...  No stuffy camp reports to fill out, and none of Theseus’s little brothers giving him self-righteous sass when he was trying to play Pac-Man.  That’d be the dream.  Didn’t  _have_  to be just a dream, of course, if either Zeus decided to welcome his son home or Percy Jackson - (Perry Jacobsen?  Peter Johansson?  Dionysus would need to have something fresh ready, next time the kid stormed up to him yelling something about quests) – considered using a somewhat quieter, more hangover-sensitive tone of voice.  Dionysus highly doubted either of those things would come to be anytime soon, but you know – he  _was_  a god.  Believing in miracles was sort of in the job description.  

Dionysus was tending to the camp’s strawberry patches with Castor when that very same Percy Jackson – (looking like a sleek and playful mini-Theseus, as usual) – came to get him.  Maybe Percy didn’t know what his big brother’d done: how Theseus had promised Ariadne love and then ditched her on an island to die...  How her winding, clever thread had been good enough to get him through the minotaur’s Labyrinth, but then he’d decided her hands weren’t good enough to hold.  Sure, maybe Percy didn’t know yet, but Dionysus sometimes saw Theseus in the way he moved all the same.  The way he spoke, and demanded, and crashed his way around the world like so many ship-wrecking waves.  Poseidon’s son. 

It was a difficult image to shake, though Ariadne asked her husband to be gentle about it, if he could.  To be understanding, because they were still perched right at the edge of Percy Jackson’s story and there was no knowing what he might become.  It was easier to be gentle when Dionysus felt less overall terrible, though.  Significantly easier to talk about turning people into squirrels, then – mostly just for the catharsis.               

“Someone’s at the Big House for you, Mr. D,” Mini-Theseus said.  Admittedly, Percy seemed to  _want_  to be kinder than the actual Theseus had ever been.  Sometimes, anyway. He had a nasty case of poison ivy snaking over his arms right about now, for instance, from when he’d reached into a brambly clump of the stuff over and over trying to rescue that blonde Athena kid’s wallet.  (Which she’d ended up getting back with a large stick, anyway.  Huge surprise there, said no one at all.)  Dionysus had considered slipping the kid a salve or something, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.  Nobody much used up Ambrosia on the likes of poison ivy, given what  _else_  there was around to cause demigod-ly harm.  “She says she’s here to surprise you?”

Dionysus cupped a handful of lush, swaying strawberry plant leaves in his palm, and felt them twist and sprout sweet bleeding fruit against his skin.  He squinted.  His eyes felt so raw and achy all the time, now.  “I’m not so sure I’m in the mood for surprises, Preston,” Dionysus said.  “Why don’t you just take some kind of message down for me, or whatever you like?”                

“She told me you’d say that,” Percy shrugged.  “But she  _also_  said you’ll be curious enough to come see what’s happening, anyway…  And that she misses you all the time.”

Dionysus’s guts turned over inside himself – he felt the smile curl up his lips, honest and conspiratorial, wild and soft.  Felt it whether he meant to smile at all, as completely  _his_ as a thyrsus staff in his fist, as all the names and shifting faces he’d ever worn. 

“Oh,” he said.  “ _Oh_.”              

Dionysus didn’t think about the Diet Coke stain on his shirt until he’d already hurried back over to the Big House, sandals slapping against the soles of his feet and socks damp with living earth from the garden.  Hurried to Ariadne, who threw her arms around him and pulled him close, no matter how smothering the cloud of bug spray had gotten around him.  Ariadne wouldn’t mind any of it, he knew.  She’d wiped vomit off his clothes, before, and toweled blood out of his hair.  She kissed him again, now, and her airy flowered skirts hung down over bare, rough feet.  She swept his hat off, held loose in her hand, and ivy coiled up her wrist like bangles.  Like all the words he didn’t know how to string together just yet, reaching for her.                 

“I miss you, too,” Dionysus said, and his voice was almost like it was supposed to be, back on Olympus.  So far away from Camp Half-Blood and this snappish, hungover side of his personality he sometimes felt he barely knew.                  

“Ha,” Ariadne said, her arms still squeezing around the soft of his waist, her grin just a little bit impish.  “I knew the poor kid would have to tell you it was me.”                

Ariadne’s kiss had tasted like wine, of course: almost breaking Zeus’s rule, but quietly, unnoticed.  She said she’d weaseled out permission to take her husband to lunch, if he wanted – something something good behavior, something something a polished-up performance review from Chiron.  Dionysus told her he’d follow anywhere she wanted to go.  He didn’t think what Theseus’s little brother would make of words like that, not until Percy Jackson was clearing his throat in the Big House doorway.                

Percy waved awkwardly and then scratched at some of the poison ivy splotches up his wrists. He was looking at Dionysus like he’d never seen him before – which he hadn’t, not really.  Not the way Dionysus still dreamt himself whenever he nodded off instead of officiating battle-relay races or whatever else he was supposed to be doing.  Something in Percy’s face said he was just _this_ close to offering over a bad joke, the sort of joke a less merciful god would make him regret.  Dionysus kinda wanted to know what it would be, honestly – hopefully something a little more creative than _“Get a room!”_ – except the joke didn’t come. 

For a breath, it seemed like Percy Jackson had misplaced all his snappy words and might just duck out of there.  But then the kid smiled, almost as if Dionysus were one of his friends.  A teammate he’d hurl himself into battle for, celestial bronze sword catching in the sun and flecked with sea spray.  It made sense, why people like Grover and that Annabeth girl didn’t mind getting tossed smiles like that.  This was a tentative version of the lopsided loyalty-smile Percy used around his team, maybe, still kind of bitter and confused at the edges.  But he said, “It’s weird to see you so happy…  I’ll cover for you, if someone asks where you went?” just the same.

And Dionysus said, “Thank you, Percy,” before he realized it.  He considered all the time he’d spent flipping through baby-name books for different “P” names, shielding the pages against the afternoon glare and hoping nobody read over his shoulder.  Ah, well.  He didn’t swap Percy’s name out for a different one, though.  Not this time.  Not with Ariadne grinning at him and all the confused surprise on Percy Jackson’s face.  That surprise was satisfying in and of itself, like chilled Diet Coke on a smothering day.                

The air smelled sweeter somehow, as Ariadne led her husband out into the world, again.  Beyond the camp; beyond punishment and frisbees and campfire songs chanted over and over until they might very well be winding along in somebody’s immortal head for all eternity.  Dionysus breathed deep, and asked exactly how Ariadne’d “polished up” his performance review…  Just in case his marginally-improved camp counselor skills ever came up in conversation, you know.  He didn’t ask where they were going, not until they were almost there.  He didn’t need to – more welcome than Olympus itself, just then, whatever it was. 


End file.
